Saving your self: How identity relevance influences product usage

Daniel Sheehan; Sara Loughran Dommer

doi:10.1093/jcr/ucz037

Saving your self: How identity relevance influences product usage

Daniel Sheehan, Sara Loughran Dommer

Marketing and Supply Chain

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Although research has consistently demonstrated that people prefer to purchase products and brands that represent their identity, relatively little research has examined how this identity relevance influences product usage. Drawing from work on intertemporal choice, the present work proposes a conceptual framework for the influence of identity on product usage. The authors theorize and demonstrate an identity conservation effect, in that consumers are less likely to use nondurable identity products compared to nonidentity products because the tradeoff between possession value and in-use value is larger for identity products. Six studies demonstrate the identity conservation effect and provide support for the value tradeoff framework through both mediation and theoretically supported moderation.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1076-1092
Number of pages	17
Journal	Journal of Consumer Research
Volume	46
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucz037
State	Published - Apr 1 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Daniel Sheehan (dan.sheehan@uky.edu) is an assistant professor in the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain, Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506. Sara Loughran Dommer (sara.dommer@scheller.gatech.edu) is an assistant professor of marketing at the Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30308. This research was partially funded by the Ray C. Andersen Center for Sustainable Business at the Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology. The authors would like to thank Karen Page Winterich, Nicole Verrochi Coleman, Ryan Hamilton, and Allan (Haipeng) Chen for their comments on a previous version of this article. Please address correspondence to Daniel Sheehan. Supplementary materials are included in the web appendix accompanying the online version of this article.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Author(s) 2019.

Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Keywords

consumption
identity
in-use value
possession value
product usage

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Business and International Management
Anthropology
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Economics and Econometrics
Marketing

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10.1093/jcr/ucz037

Cite this

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Saving your self: How identity relevance influences product usage

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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